photograph courtesy wilson wine
A glass tea kettle sheds its crystal transparency for a vibrant golden hue accentuated by low candlelight. As the tea steeps, various local dishes are whisked out to the table, accompanied by curated wine selections from all over the world. Over the course of several hours, it’s a culinary journey through the five senses, an escape from the mundanities of the city and everyday life as you simply sit and enjoy the food in the moment. And it’s all within a quick drive from Memphis.
The Wilson Wine Experience is a series of wine tastings and dinners just 45 minutes up I-55 in the small town of Wilson, Arkansas (population just under 1,000). The city was founded as a company town by Robert E. Lee Wilson in 1886, and remained under Wilson Company ownership until the twenty-first century. But how did a logging and sawmill town with surprising Tudor-style English architecture become the site for a wine getaway?
In 2010, the Wilson family looked to sell their land, and it was quickly snapped up by The Lawrence Group, a company with farmland holdings in five states, orange groves in Florida, the Heitz vineyard and winery in Napa Valley, California, ownership of one of the country’s largest HVAC distributors, and plenty more holdings. The group, headed up by Gaylon Lawrence Jr., made it its mission to revitalize Wilson and transform the town into a tourist destination for the Delta.
Two members of the Lawrence Group have their boots on the ground in Wilson to help guide the wine experiences forward. Norbert Mede, vice president of operations for Wilson, arrived there in April of 2020 and quickly got to work. By July, the Wilson Wine Experience was served to the public.
Chef Roberto Barth, center, is responsible for the menu at each Wilson Wine Dinner. Many of his dishes draw on regional themes and ingredients, but with his own unique twists.
Chef Roberto Barth has been in the area a little longer. A former personal chef to Lawrence, he was stationed in Wilson five-and-a-half years ago and knows the area well. He heads up the Wilson Café & Tavern and is also heavily involved in monitoring The Grange, an event venue and agricultural site in town. That made the transition to organizing wine-based hospitality events much easier.
“When Gaylon started looking at investment in California several years ago, that’s when he really got interested in wine,” says Barth. “Here in Wilson is where we started moving from kind of a private atmosphere to something that would be more in the public eye. So we had these conversations about creating unique experiences and utilizing some of these old buildings that are already here.”
At first, the Wilson Wine Experience started out simply as wine tastings, but as the year progressed, Lawrence sat down with Barth to come up with new ideas for the concept. “We started doing the tastings in July, and we were doing them pretty consistently every week,” explains Mede. “But when Roberto and I reopened the restaurant [Wilson Café] after the COVID-19 shutdown, we knew there was an opportunity there to try something else out. We kicked around some details, and since Roberto has experience with these types of events, we thought having a Wilson Wine Dinner made for a natural progression.”
When it comes to creating a new dinner, Mede describes himself as the instigator, but Barth as the alchemist. The pair comes up with a list of themes, and then Barth creates a menu around those ideas. Mede shops around both locally and nationally to find the right wines to pair with Barth’s dishes, and once that’s completed, the menu is ready. The November dinner welcomed guests to the historic Wilson theater, with attendees required to wear masks, and parties seated at tables spaced at least six feet apart, in line with covid-19 safety requirements. Titled “Be Thankful,” the event was created to have diners reflect on the spirit of Thanksgiving.
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photograph by samuel x. cicci
Pork cheek croquettes.
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photograph by samuel x. cicci
Roasted apple tart with bacon jam, autumn greens, and champagne vinaigrette.
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photograph by samuel x. cicci
Oysters and Pearls.
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photograph by samuel x. cicci
Infused autumn tea intermezzi.
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photograph by samuel x. cicci
“Cotton Roll” panna cotta, with mango gel.
The Courses
Each dinner consists of multiple courses. Before the meal proper starts, guests sample glasses of wine and two appetizers, a roasted pumpkin soup, and a chicken liver mousse combined with an apple gel. For Mede and Barth, utilizing the five senses is a significant part of the experience.
“We eat as a necessity more often than we eat for pleasure,” says Mede. “So we want to slow it down, accentuate your senses, and really have diners be present in the moment. For the Be Thankful dinner, we wanted to instill a kind of peace or calmness, a thankfulness for all that we have.”
The first course, braised pork cheek croquette, indicates Barth’s eagerness to explore new avenues for his dishes. “I love the pork cheek,” he says. “It’s a cut that not a lot of people use, and you won’t usually find it on menus, but it’s delicious.” Barth’s croquettes are fried, and placed over a pesto purée made from Swiss chard tops. The dish is paired with pickled onions and has a little bit of a smoked flavor.
“We want you to smell this dish,” he says. “It’s very seasonal right now [in November], when they’re harvesting cotton and burning the fields. You get that sense of smell throughout.”
After the savory croquettes, Barth balances out the palate with a sweet (but not too much) diversion. The roasted apple tart is made from apples cultivated in the Wilson orchard across from the theater, and he adds a smoky and salty bacon jam accompaniment. Champagne vinaigrette and dandelion greens round out the plate.
“Finally, instead of just having the apple tart, we also include a nice little sweet apple chip,” says Barth. “That gives us a way to utilize that ingredient in a couple of different ways.”
The third course sees Barth put his spin on the Oysters and Pearls dish made famous by chef and restaurateur Thomas Keller. “It’s not an original menu item, but I thought I could put my own little unique twist on it to play with the senses,” says Barth. Using a white wine butter sauce as the base, he poaches it at the last minute and adds tapioca as the pearl element. “Then we put in a chive garnish,” says Barth. “It really adds a unique mouth feel and creativity to the dish.”
The courses are split by the intermezzo: a kettle of tea that has been slowly steeping since the Be Thankful dinner began. When diners sit down for the evening, they discover a plate with helpings of mint, coriander, and lemon. Guests are able to choose how much of each ingredient they load into the kettle, making the flavor profile a bit different at every table, and allowing them to really tailor it to specific tastes. The kettle’s hue grows ever more golden as the time flies by, providing a nice visual marker at the candlelit tables and making everone feel like participants in the dinner.
“We didn’t want to go too overboard with anything,” says Barth, “but thought it would make for a nice, refreshing option before resuming the food.”
And the intermezzo sets the stage for what might be the highlight of the evening. Barth’s braised short rib might just be one of the tenderest cuts of meat I’ve ever tasted, delicately falling from the bone and providing no resistance as I bite into it. “I thought it would be fun to just keep a nice classical dish there,” he says. “It’s a nicer grade braised short rib on the bone; we butcher it in-house, serve it with parsnip puree and roasted squash, and add a nice demi-glace.”
Barth closes the Be Thankful dinner with a “Cotton Roll” panna cotta with mango gel, a tribute to the region. “You see the cotton bales in this region,” he says, “and you see them tied together with a nice orange wrapping around them. For years, I’ve thought, ‘How can I make this into a dessert?’ And that was where the inspiration came from. For the vanilla panna cotta with the mango gel on the outside, it kind of represents the cotton bales in this region. I serve it up with some nice pistachios, a little coconut, and an almond cream. It’s not going overboard, and I try to keep the flavors simple so they work well together.”
photograph courtesy wilson wine
Socially distanced Wilson Wine events are held at many locations around town, including the historic Wilson theater and the town square.
Wilson Looking Forward
With tastings and dinners well under way, Mede and Barth want to continue expanding the programming they offer as part of the Wilson Wine Experience. The weekly wine tastings have been popular and well received by the surrounding areas, says Mede, but COVID-19 has kept the number of participants to a small amount in each group. In December, the duo followed up the Be Thankful event with a Christmas in Europe progressive dinner. That saw diners not only move through several courses curated by Chef Barth, but also move around the town to different venues in Wilson.
That progression is a key part of the experience. In between courses, Mede will get up in front of the crowd to explain the nature of the forthcoming dish: which senses it seeks to stimulate, why they chose it as a course, and what he hopes diners will take away from it. It’s just another piece of the puzzle, and one that Mede hopes to embellish moving forward.
“I really want to make a continued effort on the educational component of this,” he says. “I think we’ll do six wine dinners next year [2021], and Roberto and I really motivate each other to innovate. We really push each other to create unique experiences; it’s not just the event; it’s exploring how we can really shape our own future, create our own story. It’s an extremely important thing to both Roberto and myself, that we can put Wilson on the map. And I think we have, regionally, in the short time we’ve been collaborating.”
photograph by samuel x. cicci
Members of the Memphis String Quartet serenaded diners throughout the evening.
As Mede and Barth plan for next year, they want to continue pushing the envelope when it comes to crafting experiences. Luckily for participants, they still have plenty of ideas left in the tank. One event they had lined up before it had to be canceled was a Harvest Moon festival in October. “We’d have people out there, under the full moon rising over the fields,” says Mede. “It would have been an amazing night.”
With a new hotel nearing completion on the Wilson town square, expect to see more features added to the Wilson Wine Experience. That might include a wine cellar where guests can purchase vintages featured in each dinner. And with more places for guests to stay, Mede is mulling over bringing in additional guest chefs, or representatives from a wider array of vineyards, to partner with Barth.
More focused dinner events are in the works, as well. “I’m thinking about taking this experience and paring it down a little,” says Barth. “We might see three to four courses and have a real chef’s table experience at the café or in one of our private gardens. It’s another great way to introduce some fun, unique dishes that are one of a kind. And again, we’d pair it either with vineyards within the company, or curated wines from Norbert.”
In the mood to try your hand at some of Barth’s creations? That’s an option as well. “We’re going to bring back cooking classes, which I’m extremely passionate about,” he says. “We’ll do it in the kitchen space we have over at the café. It’s a little dependent on COVID, but we’ve got a wide-open space that people can safely social distance in and have a comfortable environment. When the time is right, Norbert will come up with an idea in his head, and we’ll get going in that direction.”
For Mede, this is just the beginning of what Wilson can offer. “We’re pulling regionally,” he says, “but we’re starting to see more people arrive at our events from a wider range. We’ve got Memphis, of course, but then Jonesboro, Little Rock, folks from Missouri. When the hotel is ready, we’re going to target St. Louis. Then we can start adding more things. Maybe wine weekends, wine festivals, a tasting room, different classes, even symposium seminars. We will involve multiple wineries and food-related entities, and just layer on the whole experience we have here.”
“Be Thankful” Dinner Menu
Preamble
Roasted pumpkin soup, candied ginger, toasted pumpkin seeds;
Chicken liver paté, apple gel, and crostini
Chateau du Ponce Fleurie 2016 — Gamay, France
The Main Event
SMELL:
Pork cheek croquette
Cuerno Ribera Del Duero 2015 — Spain
TASTE:
Roasted apple tart with bacon jam, autumn greens, champagne vinaigrette
Mer Soleil Unoaked Chardonnay 2017 — Monterrey, California
SIXTH SENSE:
Oysters and Pearls
Joao Ramos Vinho Verde 2019 — Portugal
TOUCH:
Infused autumn tea intermezzi
Self-created — Wilson, Arkansas
SOUND:
Braised short ribs
Primus The Blend 2015 — Chile
SIGHT:
“Cotton Roll” panna cotta with mango gel
Chateau Ste Michelle Riesling 2019 — Columbia Valley, USA
